Category Archives: Ham Radio Software

Google glass are wearable computer, with a built-in Android OS on it, and in this movie N3WG Nick Garner show us a sample application of a ham radio related application written for the Google Glass platform.
Practically Nick is able to remote control an Elecraft KX3 radio via the Pigremote connected via Wi-Fi, of simply give commands to the Android OS to display latest dx spots, or show GMT time.

I already wrote a post some months ago about the first ham radio app for google glass, QSL query by AE5DY, but this app is a real example of a practical implementation of this new google interface.

Ham Radio Deluxe, a software suite for ham radio operators, become quickly popular among the amateur radio community thanks to the powerfullness of it’s features.

Born mainly as a radio-control tool with the CAT commands interface, it has been joined by a complete log-book tool, and a complete multimode decoding/encoding system named Digital Master 780, and many other accessories like rotor control, mapping tools and interfaces to many ham-gadgets and tools.

HRD permitted to many hams to open their windows to the digital modes, in particular to PSK31 and RTTY. DM780 is in any case an excellent CW decoder as well, and can operate in many other modes, like olivia, packtor, packet, SSTV and many many ham radio digital modes.

Originally developped by Simon Brown HB9DRV, GD4ELI and distributed as a freeware, source code has been sold to HRDSoftware LLC that developed latest versions and release the new commercial version 6.

Since HRD Software LLC announced to dismiss the file hosting of the free version of Ham-Radio-Deluxe 5.x, I’ve decided to host these files for your and mine convenience. Latest available free Ham Radio Deluxe build is the 5.24.38

DL9KCE released a new version of his ICNIRPcalc software that allows you to calculate safety distances for many know amateur radio antennas with respect to ICNIRP limits.

Calculations are done by considering many depending factors, like your Antenna characteristics, Band, Gain, Power Output, Coax Line, additional attenuation and many more.

By variating any of these values a different Safety Distance is calculated.

You can choose by many popular antennas, and I found even my GAP Titan DX antenna… but if you cant find it, you can always create your own antenna, from the File Menu you can choose “Construct your own antenna” and you will be able to put your custom values.

The software is free to use, and is based on a german version, that is much older but suited for German antenna safety regulation, that looks like to be very strict.

I’ve enjoyed playing with varing Output Power, coax cable and band and noticing the changes in EIRP or Ant. Input power… very interesting.

The ICNIRPcalc is a MS windows application of aprox 900Kb, I’ve tested under Windows XP (running on a virtual machine under my MacOS) and is Multilingual too, having an English German and French translated interface.